Advaita, "in" vs. "as"

Yes, I understand that there is much good in many religions. I certainly affirm that my Catholic school education was in many regards superior. I am very grateful for that. I'm only commenting on aspects of the whole religious phenomenon that might keep those pious folks ignorant who have the capacity and will to discover something more foundational for themselves.

I'm not sure that "Advaitist" is even a word, but I have used it as a tag to loosely point in the direction of what I understand to Be. "Advaita" is an Indian philosophical system based on non-dualism. It might, I have recently found out, be called "Non-Dualism" in English. Very simplistically, it is predicated on the premise that God and Creation are One and inseparable. Or one might say "There are not two, there is only one." So the statement attributed to Jesus that "I and my Father are One" is a statement of the necessity of being, not of a special kind of person-ness or miraculous manifestation.

It has much to do with your question about "in" and "as." As far as I can tell, most "Christian" religions are dualistic in nature. By this I mean the idea found in many religions that there is a God and an objective world created as something apart, or objective to, God and vice-versa. To me, this is a misinterpretation of existence now being addressed by quantum physics as it has been addressed for thousands of years by the Great Teachers. In fact, a reading of some of the words attributed to Jesus in the Bible lead me to this conclusion as well. That is based on the observation that a very important sense of the word "I" does not translate into English in other than an egoic way.

"Christian" is in quotes because of the simple fact that if there was one Jesus called The Christ, then the several main Christian denominations, not to mention its unnumbered subdivisions, cannot all be practicing what must have at one time been an original teaching. They are all, in a word, beliefs. That is a fancy word acceptable to adults for "let's pretend." That is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, except that if you take it for Reality, you lose. What do you lose? Any chance of perhaps perceiving what that original Teaching might have been. You also lose a lot of playmates because you insisted that it is your game and they have to play by your rules and die or suffer if they don't. This is true of many non-Christian faiths as well, and many "-isms" and "-ologys."

The crux (lol) of the matter is perhaps the difference in knowledge by information and knowledge by identity.

Information is always by its own nature partial. It is always a best guess, an ad hoc, or a pro tem. Due to the human need to be right, to be validated, which is an emotional, not scientific, issue; partial understandings masquerading emotionally as reality get adhered to and practiced unflinchingly by many who wish the security of a closed system. Information is not a closed system, and beyond that, it is a speculative endeavor largely because of the narrow band perceptive ability of our senses, which are further restricted by operating in local time and space, as far as I can tell. This is the realm of operation of most, if not, all religions.

Knowledge by identity works Now, outside of time and space. It works outside of time and space in that it is "bigger" than that continuum and the only substance to it. If you put a pencil dot on a very large piece of paper and called it "all of time and space," the paper would represent Eternity, but wouldn't be nearly large enough or even begin to have enough dimensions. Moreover, that Eternity has no component of duration. It IS. Advaita is the descriptions offered by those who know this of what IS as distinct from what seems to be. Those descriptions are offered as a way to alter thinking in order to bring about a thought pattern congruent with Reality in order that an individual might SEE, and thereby exponentially know At-Onement with Reality, or God. In other words, there cannot, as is purported in Christian and other religions, be a Creation apart from God. Creation is a manifestation of God Himself. The human mind, being limited in scope, is the seeming barrier through which God, Reality, can experience Self from a localized perspective and thus enjoy the infinitude of Creation. But the sense of Self is unlimited and genuine and Whole. It is why many who become enlightened exclaim, "I have not been deceived!" It is the aspect of Divinity called Soul, which Dr. Mills referred to as "The feeling of Being I AM."

This is why to me to say that God is "in" something smacks of pantheism. Yet to say that God is manifesting "as" this or that allows at least the possibility of acknowledgment of the inseparability of, what to our senses, only seems to be a discreet object. The idea of "objects" having no independent existence is as well in accordance with quantum physics.

You might, in addition to F. Merrell-Wolff's books, enjoy David Baum's Wholeness and the Implicate Order.